The Mail & Guardian recently wrote to cabinet ministers asking an innocuous question. The replies, or lack of them, were rather enlightening … Minister of Public Enterprises Stella Sigcau is the winner of the Mail & Guardian’s first Cabinet Efficiency Test (CET). The CET was conducted to measure the speed and competence with which cabinet […]

Justin Pearce THE boy whose designer tackies went up in flames=20 decided things had gone a bit too far. He’d come along=20 to an honest techno rave, was minding his own business=20 at 120 beats per minute, when this flaming tennis ball=20 came rolling across the floor, reducing R500 worth of=20 footwear to a charred […]

Rocky’s on a roll, and he’s doing his damnedest to shake off the moss of his past, reports Stefaans BrUmmer ROCKY MALEBANE-METSING — coup maker, would-be provincial premier, ANC ally turned thorn — has reinvented his role in politics. The vehicle for the emergence of the new Rocky is the “triple-P”, his People’s Progressive Party, […]

Chemical giant Hoechst SA’s managing director, Reinhard=20 Traub, speaks to Aspasia Karras Reinhard Traub, managing director of chemical company=20 Hoechst SA, which went public last week, had a long=20 career within Hoechst’s multinational network before=20 coming to South Africa in 1989. He has a cosmopolitan air which he attributes to a=20 deep-seated appreciation for each […]

CRICKET: Jon Swift KRISH MACKERDHUJ and the United Cricket Board (UCB) he=20 heads are faced with a problem shared with the majority=20 of nations in the cricket-playing world. It is simply this: how to fill the empty stands over=20 five long days of a Test match. “People had become too=20 used to the one-day game […]

This weekend’s IFP national conference will look at ways for the party to consolidate its power in KwaZulu/Natal, report Ann Eveleth and Mehlo Mvelase The rumour mills have been peculiarly quiet this week in the run-up to the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) national conference opening in Ulundi tonight. Party sources poured cold water on earlier […]

Anne Eveleth Pietermaritzburg Mayor Rob Haswell’s call this week for the Durban-Maritzburg corridor to become South Africa’s 10th province — divided by soft boundaries from the rest of conflict-ridden KwaZulu/Natal — has struck at the heart of the incessant demarcation wrangles stalling Durban’s local government process. Won by the African National Congress in last year’s […]

M&G reporters After battling to integrate former enemies into South Africa’s National Defence Force, the SANDF is now facing an even bigger challenge: how to demobilise 30 000 soldiers. Jakkie Cilliers, Director of the Institute of Defence Policy (IDP), says it was a mistake to integrate before demobilising. “Now, after they have decided who joins […]

Justin Pearce African Satellite Entertainment Corporation (Asec), the dark horse of satellite broadcasting in South Africa, is to announce a broadcast package next week which could pose a serious challenge to rivals MultiChoice. There is speculation that Asec has secured South African broadcast rights to Rupert Murdoch’s Sky TV — which offers a wide variety […]

Marion Edmunds President Nelson Mandela’s office has intervened in the selection of Land Claims Court judges in a bid to include women on the shortlist of nominees. Presidential spokesman Parks Mankahlana confirmed this week that the office would be asking the Judicial Services Commission to discuss new candidates, despite the fact that public hearings to […]